Social Network + E-commerce Hybrid Site Wishkoo Launches

Early March, several media reported the appearance of a new service called Wishkoo.com, a service which combines social network with e-commerce. With this service, someone can ask their relatives to buy gift collectively for certain friend. After the release of its beta version earlier, today Wishkoo is officially opening its service for public.

At Wishkoo, you can ‘lock’ your desired item so your friends can buy it for you or you can ask your friends to buy a gift as they want. The invitation to buy collectively can be shared via Facebook, Twitter and email.

You can be friends with other user, sending message and see what other user wants. Item purchasing can be done through bank transfer (BCA and Mandiri) as well as using Piggy Coins, a facility on Wishkoo in the form of saving from the unused money – from excessive donation, expired wish or an unpaid item.

The concept of Wishkoo, as explained in an email by one of its co-founders, Chaya Kusuma, is based on the observation on Indonesian customer behavior in the social network, such as sharing their desired item on Facebook. Wishkoo also sees that Indonesian people are actively doing digital transaction, both by trading online or in the BB group. The collective concept in Wishkoo is also based on the observation on Indonesian culture which is close to collective concept and the habit of giving gift and getting together to celebrate something.

Before the official release, Wishkoo had opened its service beta version and managed to gather more than 11.000 users. The marketing strategy used to introduce its service is by maximizing the social media account of one of its co-founder, Daniel Mananta. Other than Chaya an Daniel, the other co-founder is Ben Subiakto who is known in the startup world through Project Eden and CEO of Fimela.com. Wishkoo also approaches the community to search for selected items.

Besides directly purchasing items, at Wishkoo user is directed to buy collectively the gifts on their friend’s wishlist. To provide the items, Wishkoo cooperates with several merchants such as Damn I Love Indonesia (also owned by Daniel), Global Teleshop, AEDI Shop, Metron and others. Wishkoo also works together with person with unique interest to search for curated items.

Chaya explains that sharing system is implemented with Wishkoo’s merchant partner, it’s different for each merchant depending on the category of product offered by the merchant, with various percentage according to the value of the product.

The focus on user activity, social element and e-commerce are some segments which Indonesian user can choose from. The three segments was, is and will continue to develop. Other than marketing and promotion process to introduce the concept of its service, selecting product certainly becomes one of the main points needs developing.

The product is interesting because as explained by Chaya, Wishkoo is developing a button which will be adapted by other e-commerce service that needs collective wish list feature. It will open the API for Wishkoo button which can be placed on other site. This can help to extend the collection of items which probably wanted by user and not already available on Wishkoo.

Even after trying it for some time, I feel not so comfortable with the look and user experience of Wishkoo, including the flow of the menu and element of design, but as I said earlier, it’s always interesting to see the development of a service which maximizes social element, e-commerce and user participation to be active in the service. API can be another interesting thing which implementation is worth waiting for.